The use of electronic messages for transmitting text, images and video has grown to the point where it is now often a mission-critical service. Individuals and organizations have come to view it as being vital to their everyday operations. In fact, any particular message may be transmitting valuable information that a user of a messaging system simply cannot afford to lose.
Message gateways (e.g. servers or routers) are used to manage the flow of messages across a network. Gateways may also serve other functions like email security and/or hygiene. One function of message gateway servers is that they can receive a message from external systems (e.g. a client device) via a public network, such as the Internet, queue them locally for processing, and/or relay them on to other message gateway servers where they can be accessed by other client devices. Before being relayed, electronic messages are typically stored in queues on the gateways. Relaying the message may not be possible if the target gateway is unreachable due to a network error, temporarily down for maintenance, or unavailable for any other reasons. This may result in the message being “stuck” on a system that cannot deliver the message to client devices of the non-functioning gateway server.